Admitting, however, the universal use of the Romance all over France down to the twelfth century, which no French author has yet doubted or denied; and allowing that what the writers of those times say of the Gallic is to be understood of the Romance, as appears from chronological proofs, and the expressions of several authors prior to the fifth century;[AS] who, by distinguishing the Gallic both from the Latin and the Celtic, plainly indicate that they thereby mean the Romance, those being the only three languages which, before the invasion of the Franks, could possibly have been spoken, or even understood in Gaul:  admitting these premises, I say, it necessarily follows, that the language introduced into England under Alfred, and afterwards more universally established by Edward the Confessor, and William the Conqueror, must have been an emanation of the Romance, very near akin to that of the abovementioned oath, and consequently to that which is now spoken in the Alps.

The intercourse between Britain and Gaul is known to have been of a very early date; for even in the first century we find, that the British lawyers derived the greatest part of their knowledge from those of the continent;[AT] while on the other hand, the Gallic Druids are known to have resorted to Britain for instruction in their mysterious rites.  The Britons, therefore, could not be totally ignorant of the Gallic language.  And hence it will appear, that Grimbald, John, and the other doctors introduced by Alfred,[AU] could find no great difficulty in propagating their native tongue in this island; which tongue, at that interval of time, could only be the true Romance, since they were contemporaries with Lewis the Germanic.

That the Romance was almost universally understood in this kingdom under Edward the Confessor, it being not only used at court, but frequently at the bar, and even sometimes in the pulpit, is a fact too well known and attested[AV] to need my further authenticating it with superfluous arguments and testimonies.

Duclos, in his History of the Gallic’ Romance,[AW] gives the abovementioned oath of Lewis as the first monument of that language.  The second he mentions is the code of laws of William the Conqueror,[AX] whom the least proficient in the English history knows to have rendered his language almost universal in this kingdom.  How little progress it had yet made towards the modern French; and how great an affinity it still bore with the present Romansh of the Grisons, will appear from the annexed translation of the first paragraph of these laws into the latter tongue.[AY]

If we may credit Du Cange,[AZ] who grounds his assertion upon various instruments of the kings of Scotland during the twelfth century, the Romance had also penetrated into that kingdom before that period.